ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00776-z OPEN Hollywood survival strategies in the post- COVID 19 era ✉ Michael Johnson Jr 1 Since the arrival of the Coronavirus in the United States, Americans have been forced to quarantine themselves at home in dramatic fashion, unlike almost any other time in the nation’s history. Moreover, the American workforce has been equally impacted by virtue of 1234567890():,; state-imposed shutdowns that have affected innumerable businesses, including the Holly- wood entertainment industry, which is the subject of this research. I examine how com- mercial entertainment conglomerates like AT&T, Comcast, Disney, ViacomCBS, and Fox have responded to mandatory closures for businesses that employ a human workforce upon whom they rely for their labor, and to human consumers they seek to distribute their film and television commodities to for profit. Using historical and discourse analyses in a political economic theoretical framework, I review contemporary reports about the economic condi- tions which have influenced the industry’s technological adaptation and innovation and argue that the Hollywood television and film industries will capitalize upon this current public health crisis as a motivator to adopt streaming platforms as the new preferred distribution mechanism of entertainment long after COVID 19 is a memory. This qualitative research examines the technological adaptations employed by these entertainment conglomerates to analyze (1) how the transition to streaming video on demand has occurred, and evaluates (2) what the adoption of these survival strategies mean for Hollywood’s long-term economic future and survival in a “digitally competitive” (Smith and Telang, 2017) marketplace. ✉ 1 California State University, Northridge, CA, USA. email: [email protected] HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS | (2021) 8:100 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00776-z 1 ARTICLE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00776-z Introduction n 2020, the unexpected emergence of the novel Coronavirus intensification of each firm’s interest in a program doing well on Iaka “COVID-19” has produced a dramatic change in the either of their networks. The consequence of this type of inten- economic productivity of the American entertainment indus- sification subsequently affects the diversity of programming try. This change is a direct consequence of a state-imposed offered by television and streaming networks in particular. These shutdown of businesses whose employees have been ordered to factors have become even more intensified through the emer- stay at home. The results of this shutdown have produced a near gence of streaming networks that have become part of the major total eradication of Hollywood’s traditional production and dis- media conglomerates. tribution models in place preceding the global pandemic, which What was once a simple process with separate and distinct have directly impacted the major television corporations like levels (production, distribution, and exhibition) originally inher- AT&T, Comcast, Disney, Viacom, and Fox who are responsible for ited from the film industry, has now become an extremely 90% of everything seen on television today. Although the complex system whose result is the end of competition and streaming video on demand marketplace has existed for some maximization of profits. The ultimate effect of these convoluted, time (Dixon, 2013; Keating, 2013; Lobato, 2019; Fritz, 2018), only complex interrelationships is the stifling of innovation and the recently has it adopted in-house production studios of its own. powerfully interlinked markets for ratings, audiences and pro- And, in the ensuing months during which Hollywood has been grams that approximates a monopoly on television in the US. shut down, those streaming networks have seen a substantial These fully integrated overlapping conglomerates prove false the increase in demand, and thus, financial profitability, which presumption of fierce competition and speak volumes about what foreshadow other more ominous consequences for Hollywood’s finally is available for audiences to see, the ability of writers, traditional system of production and distribution to retail cine- producers, and actors to participate in what is ultimately pro- mas. Cumulatively, these technical and economic changes duced, aired, and distributed. Thus, the use of the political eco- threaten that system’s historical stability and future longevity. nomics of communication offers a very useful mechanism by This research provides a brief summary of events leading up to which to assess the sociocultural and financial consequences of the emergence of the Coronavirus, the ensuing governmental and the proliferation of streaming media in both the present and post- social consequences that stem from the pandemic’s spread, and COVID 19 future. the Hollywood entertainment industry’s reaction and adaptation Methodologically I utilize both discursive and historical ana- to this public health emergency’s impact to their profitability lyses. A historical analysis is necessary to any examination of the model. popular “cultural artifact,” as observing changes over time is essential to understanding why a contemporary phenomenon is the way that it is. And, without previous knowledge of action Theoretical framework and methodology codes, archetypes, conventions or eschatological myths, con- This research utilized the “political economy of communication” temporary American audiences will be unable to fully recognize as a theoretical framework that answers questions about con- much less comprehend their role as consumers or participants in sumption, commodification, distribution, and profit. The Frank- that phenomena. Thus, the ability to imagine change without a furt school’s theorists of the 1930s advocated that American sense of how our culture has changed over time renders such media exposed an extreme commodification of culture in a efforts doomed to failure. I also examine the method by which palpably industrial and capitalist society. Though a later inven- streaming media has accrued social value over time, while capi- tion, television became nothing more than a formulaic and talizing on the conspicuous consumption of televisual content it standardized commodity within that capitalist society. Eileen offers by social consumers. Necessary to that analysis would be an Meehan and John Fiske both describe how those early concepts, examination that determines the degree to which viewers con- discarded in favor of a more thoroughly complex dynamism sume entertainment commodities produced in a corporatized about the political economy of communications, uniquely applied process of production that “technologically” and “commercially” themselves to television. One approach analyzes markets to constrains content. As T.V. Reed points out, “Whatever else determine how corporate media construct the television industry, popular culture may be, it is deeply embedded in capitalist, for- thus illustrating why we get what we get on television (Meehan, profit mass production” (2011). The usefulness of the discursive 2006). The markets in which programs, audiences, and the analytical methodology exposes these macro-level social com- industry’s promotion of ratings as the gold standard of success plexities that frequently go undetected. As Alan McKee points out reveal one dimension of this analysis. As John Fiske points out, a “the material reality [of television] allows for the recovery and program is a cultural commodity produced and then sold to critical interrogation of discursive politics in an ‘empirical’ form; distributors. In distribution its role changes and it becomes not a [televisual texts] are not scientific data or historical documents commodity, but a producer of a new commodity—the audience but are, literally, forensic evidence” (2003) thus analyses of that is then in turn, ultimately sold to advertisers. What finally streaming media are equally compelling given their delivery determines the financial success of television as an industry is occurs both on traditional television devices and increasingly, on ultimately the “social situation of the viewer-reader, not the portable devices of all types. interests of the producers and their ideological investment in consumer capitalism” (Fiske, 1988, p. 61). And while television appears free (think of airports, sports bars, and financial centers), COVID-19 timeline and its ensuing consequences it is nevertheless being paid for, the fact is that at the individual The COVID 19 epidemic began in January 2020 in what is level “payment has no direct relationship to consumption—a believed to be in the Wuhan Province of China, where researchers person can consume as much as they wish…watching an opera… reported on a rapidly spreading novel coronavirus that produced costs no more than a quiz show or a rerun sitcom” (Fiske, 1988,p. pneumonia-like symptoms and by January 12, the Centers for 59). And because media conglomerates now can produce pro- Disease Control and Prevention reported the first confirmed case gramming for their own networks and for their rivals, which is a to appear in the United States. Three weeks later the World radical departure from the intense competition that hallmarked Health Organization issued a Public Health Emergency notice. On television’s early years, such relationships undermine the tradi- February 2, 2020, the United States issued travel restrictions for tional